Mood-Boosting Yoga

Yoga has been found to decrease anxiety and improve well-being, and now researchers have discovered a physiological connection. Three times a week for 12 weeks, subjects either spent an hour walking or doing Iyengar yoga, both workouts that involved comparable effort and energy expenditure, according to lead study author Chris C. Streeter, professor of psychiatry and neurology at Boston University School of Medicine. Brain scans revealed that only the yoga group showed significant increases in gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA, an important mood-regulating neurotransmitter. (Levels of it are reduced in people with mood and anxiety disorders, and some antidepressants have been found to increase it.) Moreover, the yoga group reported greater im­provement in positive feelings and more substantial decreases in negative ones. In previous testing, experienced yoga practitioners exhibited more than a 25 percent rise in the brain's GABA level after a one-hour session of yoga. This response was stronger than that of the yoga novices in the current study, so the beneficial effects may increase with long-term practice, the researchers speculate.